Connected to Everything. Close to No One.

Q: When did you first realize you were digitally lonely?

"It was my 21st birthday. I got 200+ 'happy birthday' posts on Instagram. My phone was blowing up with notifications. But I was sitting in my apartment alone eating instant ramen, and I suddenly realized — not a single person had actually called me. Not one. Two hundred comments, zero real conversations. That was the moment it hit me: I had an audience, not friends."

Q: How does it affect your daily life?

"I've become this person who reflexively opens Instagram every time there's a moment of silence. Waiting for coffee? Scroll. Walking between classes? Scroll. I realized I haven't let myself be bored or alone with my own thoughts in years. The irony is, all that scrolling makes me feel more alone than actual solitude ever did."

Q: You work remotely full-time. How has that shaped your sense of connection?

"I have Slack open 12 hours a day. I'm in five Discord servers. I reply to messages within seconds. From the outside, I look hyper-connected. But most days, the only real human voice I hear is the delivery guy saying 'sign here.' I've had entire weeks where every interaction was through a screen. You start to feel like you're performing the role of a person rather than being one."

Q: Have you tried to change anything?

"I started going to a café to work. Not for the coffee — for the ambient noise of other humans existing around me. It sounds pathetic when I say it out loud, but hearing someone laugh at the table next to me made me feel less like a ghost. I don't even talk to them. I just need proof that the world is still real."

Q: Do you think social media makes loneliness worse?

"Social media is like a window into a party you weren't invited to. Every night I scroll through stories of people hanging out, going to dinners, having inside jokes. And I'm lying in bed comparing my behind-the-scenes to their highlight reel. The worst part is, I know it's curated. I know they probably felt lonely too. But knowing doesn't stop the ache."

Q: What's your relationship with your phone like?

"Toxic, honestly. I check it 150 times a day — I counted once. I hate it but I can't stop. It's like my phone is this friend who never actually says anything meaningful but always takes up the seat next to me, so nobody else can sit there. I'm never truly alone, but I'm never truly with anyone either."

Q: As a content creator, you're always online. How does that feel?

"I have 50,000 followers. Fifty thousand people who watch me eat breakfast, react to my skincare routine, laugh at my jokes. And the loneliest I've ever felt in my life was the moment I turned off the camera, closed my laptop, and sat in a room so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat. The algorithm knows exactly what I like. But no one knows what I need."

Q: What would you say to other Gen Z kids feeling the same way?

"That the loneliness isn't your fault. We were handed this technology as children and told it would connect us. Nobody warned us it would also hollow us out from the inside. I'd say — put the phone down for an hour. Go sit in a park. Let yourself be bored. Being bored is the first step to being present. And being present is the first step to not being alone."

Q: You study psychology. What pattern do you see in your generation?

"We've optimized connection to the point of emptiness. We can message anyone in the world in 0.3 seconds, but we've lost the ability to sit with someone in silence and feel comfortable. Vulnerability requires bandwidth that a text message simply doesn't have. We send hearts and fire emojis instead of saying 'I love you' out loud, because the screen protects us from the terror of being seen."

Q: Is there hope?

"Absolutely. I think our generation is the first one that's becoming self-aware about this. We're naming the problem — 'digital loneliness' wasn't even a term five years ago. And there's a quiet rebellion starting: digital detox meetups, phone-free cafés, people choosing to call instead of text. We built the cage, but we also have the keys. We just have to choose to use them."

Q: When you scroll through social media, what goes through your mind?

"Comparison. Constant, relentless comparison. She's prettier. He's funnier. They have more friends. Their life looks effortless while mine feels like a daily struggle. I know it's all curated, but that doesn't stop the sinking feeling. I once spent two hours looking at a classmate's vacation photos and felt physically sick by the end. Not because I was jealous of the trip — but because she looked so happy, and I couldn't remember the last time I felt that way without performing it."

Q: Have you ever tried a social media detox?

"I deleted TikTok for two weeks last semester. The first three days were awful — I kept reaching for my phone like a phantom limb. But by day five, something shifted. I started noticing things. The sky. My dog's breathing. The sound of my mom cooking dinner. It was like waking up from a dream I didn't know I was in. I re-downloaded it on day fifteen because I felt 'out of the loop.' That's the trap — they make you feel like disappearing from the feed means disappearing from existence."

Q: You live between two cultures digitally. How does that affect your sense of belonging?

"I'm in Korean group chats that are active while I sleep, and British group chats that go quiet when I wake up. I exist in this permanent time zone of loneliness. When I video-call my friends in Seoul, they're heading to dinner together. When I try to join my flatmates for a pub quiz, they've already formed their inside jokes without me. Social media shows me both worlds simultaneously and reminds me that I'm not fully present in either."

Q: What does real connection look like to you now?

"Last month, a stranger in my lecture asked if I wanted to grab lunch. No Instagram exchange, no LinkedIn request — just 'Do you want to eat together?' I almost cried. That's how rare a genuine, unprompted human invitation has become. We ate campus food and talked about nothing important for an hour. It was the most connected I'd felt in six months. No algorithm arranged it. No notification triggered it. Just two lonely people choosing each other."

Q: You study caregiving — but who takes care of you digitally?

"That's the cruel irony. I'm learning to care for patients twelve hours a day, and then I come home to a phone full of superficial interactions that drain me even more. My friends send me memes instead of asking how I am. I get 'lol' responses to messages where I'm genuinely reaching out for help. Digital communication has made us fluent in small talk and illiterate in vulnerability. I can diagnose a patient's pain, but I can't make anyone hear mine through a screen."

Q: What gives you hope despite the digital fatigue?

"My clinical rotations. Every day I hold a real human hand, look into real human eyes, and feel a real human heartbeat. No filter, no delay, no character limit. It reminds me that connection isn't about speed or convenience — it's about presence. Sometimes a patient just needs someone to sit with them in silence. And I think that's what we all need, honestly. Not another notification. Just someone who stays."